Lathund

And the thing about a multi-positional excellent defender is that it's very easy to fit them onto the roster to give them the time and regular at bats to properly give them the chance to tap into their potential.

And the thing about a multi-positional excellent defender is that it's very easy to fit them onto the roster to give them the time and regular at bats to properly give them the chance to tap into their potential.

That player is significantly more valuable than 2 months of Josh Bell though. I mean even if the power never shows up at all and he's Alcides Escobar instead, I'd still take that every day with that defense. Or at the very least use him as part of a trade for something more long-term. What people tend to overlook with prospects is the impact of uncertainty. I mean I agree that Turang is extremely unlikely to top 4 WAR at his best even if we take the more optimistic end of the projections. But I also think he's highly likely to at least be Escobar or better. With Peterson a free agent and Wong with a team option that looks like it might get declined, even a SS/2B/CF utility man for minimum salary and with 3 option years remaining is useful. And I think he's almost certainly better than that. Anyway, I wouldn't necessarily lose much sleep over it either, it's more that I find it to be a short-sighted and unnecessary move. We're looking to compete over the next couple of years while we still have Burnes/Woodruff/Adames etc. So why trade away players who can contribute to that team (Even if it's peripherally) when you could trade players who, even if they pan out, will only do so in 2025 or beyond? I'd instead look to A-ball and below for the prospects we should trade this deadline.

That player is significantly more valuable than 2 months of Josh Bell though. I mean even if the power never shows up at all and he's Alcides Escobar instead, I'd still take that every day with that defense. Or at the very least use him as part of a trade for something more long-term. What people tend to overlook with prospects is the impact of uncertainty. I mean I agree that Turang is extremely unlikely to top 4 WAR at his best even if we take the more optimistic end of the projections. But I also think he's highly likely to at least be Escobar or better. With Peterson a free agent and Wong with a team option that looks like it might get declined, even a SS/2B/CF utility man for minimum salary and with 3 option years remaining is useful. And I think he's almost certainly better than that. Anyway, I wouldn't necessarily lose much sleep over it either, it's more that I find it to be a short-sighted and unnecessary move. We're looking to compete over the next couple of years while we still have Burnes/Woodruff/Adames etc. So why trade away players who can contribute to that team (Even if it's peripherally) when you could trade players who, even if they pan out, will only do so in 2025 or beyond? I'd instead look to A-ball and below for the prospects we should trade this deadline.

Yeah I would absolutely not do that for a rental like this. With the many arbitration eligible players on the roster, there will be very little payroll room unless Mark A is willing to allow a higher budget (Which he most likely will not). The prospects who are close to MLB ready will play a big part in allowing the Brewers to handle that. To be able to keep the big contributors around, they'd have to cut around the edges instead, and having prospects ready to step in is key to that even if the prospects aren't stars. So if it takes a better prospect to make the trade, I'd prefer it to be someone further away from the majors, even if their upside is greater. So say one of those toolsy prospects with upside to dream on, but questionable hit tools. Sometimes they find their way and become great players, but more often they're Lewis Brinson and Monte Harrison. And either way, they'll be in MLB only after Burnes, Woodruff etc. are all free agents anyway. So someone like Hedbert Perez could be a headliner. Now I'm a prospect hugger and not a huge Bell fan so I wouldn't like it overly much either, but it's the type of return that won't impact the Brewers for years, if it ever does.

Yeah I would absolutely not do that for a rental like this. With the many arbitration eligible players on the roster, there will be very little payroll room unless Mark A is willing to allow a higher budget (Which he most likely will not). The prospects who are close to MLB ready will play a big part in allowing the Brewers to handle that. To be able to keep the big contributors around, they'd have to cut around the edges instead, and having prospects ready to step in is key to that even if the prospects aren't stars. So if it takes a better prospect to make the trade, I'd prefer it to be someone further away from the majors, even if their upside is greater. So say one of those toolsy prospects with upside to dream on, but questionable hit tools. Sometimes they find their way and become great players, but more often they're Lewis Brinson and Monte Harrison. And either way, they'll be in MLB only after Burnes, Woodruff etc. are all free agents anyway. So someone like Hedbert Perez could be a headliner. Now I'm a prospect hugger and not a huge Bell fan so I wouldn't like it overly much either, but it's the type of return that won't impact the Brewers for years, if it ever does.

An extension is absolutely possible, it just won't be at a discount. Give him the biggest deal ever, make him the first $500m player, and you can extend him. If it's a team like the Dodgers, who have shown they can be competitive year in year out and have the resources to keep that up, I'm sure he'll be more willing too. Regardless of where on the "Possible" to "Likely" scale it is, the prospect of having 2½ years of exclusive negotiating rights with Soto *will* factor into the cost of acquiring him. So a team that would be looking to get just the 2½ years would still have to pay the extra cost of the possibility of the extension in order to be the highest bidder.

An extension is absolutely possible, it just won't be at a discount. Give him the biggest deal ever, make him the first $500m player, and you can extend him. If it's a team like the Dodgers, who have shown they can be competitive year in year out and have the resources to keep that up, I'm sure he'll be more willing too. Regardless of where on the "Possible" to "Likely" scale it is, the prospect of having 2½ years of exclusive negotiating rights with Soto *will* factor into the cost of acquiring him. So a team that would be looking to get just the 2½ years would still have to pay the extra cost of the possibility of the extension in order to be the highest bidder.

As good as he has been this year, he is still a career 118 wRC+ hitter overall (114 wRC+ prior to this year). And when trying to predict what he'll do the rest of the year, I'll always put more weight on the 2800 PA sample than the 400 PA one. Not that pre-2022 Bell wouldn't also improve the offense, but it then becomes far more of a marginal improvement which ought to be reflected in the acquisition cost. In other words, a rental like him is someone I feel is a perfectly cromulent deadline addition, but not someone I'd give up a whole lot for. I certainly wouldn't give up any prospect who is likely to impact the major league ballclub in the next couple of years, nor any of the true top prospects who are further away either. So no to Frelick, Mitchell, Turang, Small, Chourio, Wiemer, Black, Quero, Feliciano and the likes. And I'd try to hold on to any of the better pitching prospects as the system seems position-player heavy. I'd probably look to trade from the toolsy but raw outfielders behind those mentioned. Guys like Gray Jr might not hold a ton of value on their own, but package a few of them together and it might be attractive especially to a team like the Nationals who are very much scouting/tools focused, and not as much about skills/data. Actually that last points was something I hadn't considered; Nats could be a good fit for a trade in the sense that the two teams are probably polar opposites (Based on the writing I've seen about the profile of different front offices anyway. Which seems solid, but who knows for sure...) in what types of prospects they value. Makes it more likely that a trade can be had that both teams will feel like they did well to get.

As good as he has been this year, he is still a career 118 wRC+ hitter overall (114 wRC+ prior to this year). And when trying to predict what he'll do the rest of the year, I'll always put more weight on the 2800 PA sample than the 400 PA one. Not that pre-2022 Bell wouldn't also improve the offense, but it then becomes far more of a marginal improvement which ought to be reflected in the acquisition cost. In other words, a rental like him is someone I feel is a perfectly cromulent deadline addition, but not someone I'd give up a whole lot for. I certainly wouldn't give up any prospect who is likely to impact the major league ballclub in the next couple of years, nor any of the true top prospects who are further away either. So no to Frelick, Mitchell, Turang, Small, Chourio, Wiemer, Black, Quero, Feliciano and the likes. And I'd try to hold on to any of the better pitching prospects as the system seems position-player heavy. I'd probably look to trade from the toolsy but raw outfielders behind those mentioned. Guys like Gray Jr might not hold a ton of value on their own, but package a few of them together and it might be attractive especially to a team like the Nationals who are very much scouting/tools focused, and not as much about skills/data. Actually that last points was something I hadn't considered; Nats could be a good fit for a trade in the sense that the two teams are probably polar opposites (Based on the writing I've seen about the profile of different front offices anyway. Which seems solid, but who knows for sure...) in what types of prospects they value. Makes it more likely that a trade can be had that both teams will feel like they did well to get.

I think as long as they feel like Benintendi is passable enough in CF to play there maybe twice a week or so (Perhaps when the least fly-ball prone pitchers are on the mound) it'll be a good roster fit. Other days it'll be Yelich, Benintendi and Cutch rotating the LF/DH spots. Occasionally Renfroe too I suppose, but I like his defense in RF.

These guys know how to evaluate pitchers, if this is the guy they want, I'll trust that it's the right move. Underlying numbers look good, I doubt he'll continue to put up a .354 BABIP going forward regardless of defense, and a good defense will make it even less likely. As for Olson, Fangraphs seems like the outlier in rating him highly, and not overly impressive numbers in the minors. Again, the same "good at evaluating pitchers" thing goes here.

He was more passive at the start of the 2018 and 2019 seasons as well, before dialling in and starting to swing more. 2020 was an even more extreme version of that, and he never really got out of it. What makes me not worry about him though is that while strikeouts are concerning, he also walked 7% more than his career average for the same reasons he struck out more. What held him back was a BABIP almost 100 points lower than his career average, despite hitting the ball harder than ever. Basically with even average luck, you'd ahve expected a BA (And thus OBP) 50+ points higher, and all of a sudden he's having a great season. I think some of the passivity is warranted in that he's getting fewer pitches in the zone than almost anyone. Just needs to find that balance again, which I'm sure he will. The fact that he already transformed as a hitter once tells me he's capable of adjusting even more.

This being bumped made me go through the first pages, always fun to see reactions in hindsight. Mostly positive, some only cautiously so, some slightly negative and then there are those who absolutely hated it. "Awful awful trade. I hate it. Dear god what an awful trade." "Too much, hate this deal. Really hate it." "I feel violated." Not meant to call anyone out (Hence not quoting the actual posts with usernames), it's more about how different our views can be when we all have the same information to go on. But since it was mostly positive reactions, at least we were correct as a group in the end. Wade Miley signing thread is interesting as well, can't remember any thread with a wider gulf between the (hugely negative) reactions and the actual (very good) performance.

I'd say that whatever Diaz, Harrison, Brinson and Yamamoto end up doing, the trade will have been worth it. Brewers wanted an impact player immediately, and have gotten 2 MVP calibre seasons out of Yelich, with 3 years of team control left. If either of those four go on to be superstars I'll just be happy for them; both teams got what they wanted, and they're some fun players to watch too so everybody wins.

After rigorous investigation, and after having consulted several experts, my conclusion is that those numbers are pretty damn good.

Mike Trout. Yeah I know, that's one massive contract, but it's still Mike Trout. The one guy who's definitely better than Yelich, the guy that is already HoF-worthy. The man's two worst offensive seasons by OPS+ were 2012 and 2014, where he had a 168 OPS+. To put that into a Brewers perspective, that's more than Ryan Braun, Paul Molitor, Robin Young and Christian Yelich (Though 2019 will change that) have ever had over a full season. In those two years, his worst years, he won RoY and MVP. One year that OPS+ lead the league. In the other it didn't, but he did lead the league in runs scored, RBIs and total bases. Mike Trout, at his worst, is an MVP. As amazing as Yelich has been over the last year, Trout has been that player for 8 years now. And he does this while playing a well above average CF. You could make a decent argument for younger guys like Acuña, Soto, Bellinger. But I'd still prefer what we already have in Yelich. But the best player of this generation? I couldn't turn that down.

It doesn't really matter what the players traded away do, as long as Yelich does what we acquired him to do. And he certainly is doing that, and more, so far. Also, when talking about "winning" trades, that tends to ignore the fact that it's not a zero-sum game, and that both teams can "win" a trade. One team needs production now and gets it, one needs it later and gets it. I hope the guys we sent to Miami make it big, and that 2018 won't be Yelich's last MVP. It's not an either/or situation.

He hits the ball hard, 11th highest average exit velocity in the majors. I'm not bothered that there are a lot of ground balls (And a lot of line drives) among them. It's a tradeoff; You obviously won't hit home runs with ground balls, but they also go for hits more often than flyballs do. If he was a pull hitter I'd be concerned more with the ground balls, but he hits them to all fields (33% left, 40% center, 33% right) and he hits them hard. A hit is a hit, no matter how it comes about. I love his approach, and I'd get several more players of that type if I could. For some time the mantra was to pound the bottom of the zone with a lot of sinkers. So hitters respond by altering their swings and approach to more golf-like swings to punish that and hit more flyballs and HRs. That swing is more vulnerable to high heat, so that's likely why you see the pitching up in the zone come back. Which I'd imagine suits Yelich more than it does many others. Then there's also what each person is comfortable with. Trying to instill a cookie-cutter approach, even if it's the optimal one, isn't going to work for everyone, and risks messing some hitters up. I'm sure there are some minor adjustments he can make; he's a talented hitter and an excellent athlete, but overall I'd say the approach should be that if it ain't broke (.310/.377/.500 suggests it ain't), don't fix it.

I think this is a trade both teams will be happy with eventually. All three position players were raw and had questionable hit tools and were more long-term projects that a contending team might not have had room for. But in the end I believe their overall production, however it distributes betwern them, will be good enough to make the trade worth it for the Marlins

An interesting take on the value of the Yelich trade (And the Cain signing) from BPMilwaukee: http://milwaukee.locals.baseballprospectus.com/2018/01/30/cain-and-yelich-renegotiating-surplus/

I haven't posted anything on the trade yet, because I'm still unsure exactly what to think. Not that I'm indifferent to it, just that I see both some real positives and real negatives, and I'm not quite sure how I value them and what the end result is. So I'll just use this post to sum up some of the points and see where I land afterwards. Beware of some rambling. To start with, I should say that I don't think this was the year to make the big moves, I would have preferred to use 2018 to see if 2017 was real, to allow some top prospects to graduate and get ML playing time. But, I'll try to not let that get in the way of the analysis, as I can also see that the depressed FA market (Cain would've been long gone at a higher AAV in most previous years), the Marlins fire sale and the huge 2019 FA class and the incoming 40-man crunch making some arguments for why making these moves now makes sense. We should first take a moment to appreaciate how rare the Yelich trade is. It's a 4-WAR (Average over his first 4½ seasons) All-star outfielder, under contract for 5 years (Or 4 years + team option, which is even better), through his age 26-30 seasons for an extremely team-friendly amount. The 5 years in particular, for such an established player, are very very rare. Even rarer that they get traded. The years of team control in particular will reflect the cost; when we compare this trade to other trades, nearly all of the comparisons are for fewer years, or higher salaries. And yet it gets judged by the same standard as those by many. Trades are always hard to judge as one can't predict the future. But there are projections and predictions (And Yelich is young, consistent and seemingly durable (155 and 156 games in 2016 and 2017) so should be comparatively easy to project), and there are very few players expected to be more valuable at the time of a trade than Yelich; at least I struggle to come up with any examples. (In a vacuum that is; Chapman was infinitely valuable in that he may have been the difference between WS and no WS, but not in raw numbers). There simply aren't many opportunities to acquire players like this. There aren't many 26 year old FAs either; Bryce Harper will be one, and is clearly a better player. But that's also going to be the biggest contract ever, likely $400m+. Stanton had averaged less than 0.5 WAR more than Yelich (And was a year younger tbf) when signing his for $325m. What would Yelich get? I don't know, I'm not a great judge of the FA market, but it would be the kind of deal a club with a budget like the Brewers would never, ever make. So what I'm trying to say is that this is the only way to get a player like this. Brinson could become one, but probably not straight away. Meaning there'd need to be an early extension to make full use of it. And with more risk. And risk brings us to the next point. Even a fair veteran for prospects trade is lopsided. The immediate (and 1-2 year) return is in favour of the club trading the veteran, and the overall value over the years of control is in favour of the other club. That's just the nature of it. You pay a premium for certainty. I would think it's not unreasonable to expect that Yelich will produce 15-25 WAR over the 5 years of control. The projections for Diaz, Harrison, Brinson and Yamamoto are much, much wider. With high-risk and high-ceiling prospects like Brinson, Harrison and Diaz it's even tougher than usual. The best case scenarios for Harrison and Brinson (i.e their hit tools becoming even above average) are superstars, 5+ WAR players, so 30 WAR each over their years of team control. Or they could never establish themselves in the majors. Or be 4th/5th OF types. Or simply average starters. Even when discounting the most unlikely outliers (i.e none of them making the majors, or all of them becoming superstars) you still have a very wide range. But even then, when weighing the various projections and scenarios together by their likelyhood you still end up at an expected value higher than the average for Yelich. So, in that sense it's an 'overpay'. Every veteran for prospects trade is, by design. For one team a narrow and fairly certain range of outcomes is more valuable, at this time, than a more uncertain outcome but with a higher average outcome. So you're paying for certainty and decreased variance. You're also paying for knowing when you're getting that production, from which playing position, and in what manner. The Yelich trade is a great example of this IMO, where the prospects are very high risk and high variance and the veteran is very consistent and low risk. There's also the fact that the three highest rated pieces in the deal were all position players, and the pitcher included wasn't one near the majors. Pitching prospects are much more volatile, much harder to predict. So if sustained success for the next 4-6 years or so is what you want, keeping hold of your AA and AAA (and ML) pitching prospects makes a whole lot of sense. Maybe the cost of the deal could have been lower had some top pitching prospect been included, but as much as much as I believe in Harrison and Brinson I value developing internal pitching options more. There's higher development risk in pitchers (TINSTAAPP and all that), but that's the kind of risk a small market team can bear, hence focus development on pitching. They also have a higher economic risk when making signings, but that's one risk a small market team can't bear, so I'd focus on position players there. So yeah, while I think the overall package could have been less had a Woodruff or Burnes or Ortiz been included, I'm still happy with this. While this seems to signal a change in approach, I still don't believe it as an "all in" move. It's a move (Or moves, if we factor in Cain and the likely Santana trade) to signal the start of a competitive window (Which might be the kind of window that is intended to stay open for a loong time, or a "soft" window, or "Cardinals-style" type of approach, or whatever you want to call it), it's a move to shift from high-risk to low risk. By which I mean that a focus on retaining and developing all top, high-celing prospects, like Harrison, Brinson and Diaz, is perhaps the best way to build a true WS-favourite, a kind of one in a generation team. But it's also an approach that gives a pretty good chance of hardly ever going to the playoffs if things go wrong. Somehow I was a lot more against this type of move before it happened; looking at a prospect list and imaging those three names gone felt a lot worse than looking at the same lists now without these guys. It's still a strong system. The fact that they were traded for five full years of a young player helps; it's not a short-term move. The OF is set for several years now, but that just gives time for Grisham, Ray, Stokes, Lutz and the rest to develop quietly. That's the beauty of a deep system. There's also the matter of what we do with Santana and in the FA market. It's still possible that the strengthening of the current rotation comes from free agency, say Alex Cobb. And that Santana is used to replenish the system. Won't bring a Harrison/Brinson/Diaz package of course, but perhaps prospects in a position of weakness. Looking at it like that, the balance off this offseason isn't either rebuilding or "going for it" in the traditional sense. It's a shift towards winning now, or winning soon(er), but more like reshaping than anything else. I don't think we'll see a massive buying spree, I still think that the team will rely a lot on the prospects (mainly pitching) to fill major roles in the team over the next few years and not just be used as trade chips. A big question to ask though is how far these moves take us? Is it enough to be truly competitive? Was it too soon? Will we be caught somewhere inbetween, with neither the future value or present value we'd like? I guess that this already very long rant hasn't really brought any answers, so I'll stop for now (40-man issues being one thing I never even got to!). But the overarching feeling I get, surprisingly considering my views before the trade (and the Cain signing) is a fairly positive one. And that's despite believing that Brinson will be a huge success (And possibly he would not have been that here, not being given the development time needed during a competitive push), that Harrison is very high risk but worth it due to the sky-high potential, and that Diaz will be a productive MLB starter. But it depends also on what the next step is. I want these moves, and possible future ones, to supplement a focus on developing our own talent. Not as the starting signal for a series of short-term moves.